claim: AI's potential to reduce legal costs and increase access to justice paradoxically threatens judicial economy with a litigation boom. Instead of courts historically shrinking rights to cope, he proposes proactively integrating AI tools into the legal system. This would enhance and scale judicial processes, addressing the vast unmet legal needs, leveraging AI's growing capabilities despite current flaws, and preventing regressive responses to increased caseloads. The goal is to improve justice...

paper_title: Judicial Economy in the Age of AI

evidence_quote: [p. 33] 2025] JUDICIAL ECONOMY IN THE AGE OF AI 581 our normative evaluation of the technology. Should AI tools follow the trajectory of previous legal tech innovations, we might witness a surge in litigation activities by firms and commercial entities rather than underserved individuals.143 There is also the potential for negative uses, such as harassment or unmeritorious litigation initiated by individual plaintiffs, which could distort the justice system and detract from its core functions. Despite these considerations, I argue against a passive stance. Current trends, though based on preliminary data, indicate a clear trajectory toward increased AI integration within legal...

citation: Yonathan A. Arbel, Judicial Economy in the Age of AI, Colorado Law Review (2025).

confidence: machine-linked

limitations: Machine-linked claim. Use the evidence quote and PDF before treating it as a quotation or as a complete statement of the paper's position.


claim: While AI tools offer hope for increased access to justice by sharply reducing the costs of generating legal materials, this very effectiveness paradoxically threatens judicial economy by increasing the volume and verbosity of caseloads. He further writes that rather than courts responding by shrinking substantive rights to manage this influx, as has happened historically, the legal system should proactively integrate AI tools to enhance and scale up the legal process itself.

evidence_quote: [p. 1] JUDICIAL ECONOMY IN THE AGE OF AI YONATHAN A. ARBEL ∗ Individuals do not vindicate the majority of their legal claims because of access to justice barriers. This entrenched state of affairs is now facing a disruption. Lawyers and non-lawyers alike are adopting artificial intelligence (AI) tools to perform legal tasks—tools that sharply reduce the costs of generating legal materials. There is finally hope that AI might allow many more to access justice. Paradoxically, what we gain in access to justice we might lose in the delivery of justice. The problem is not that AI tools are ineffective. Indeed, they are even more effective than most realize—affecting every stage of the naming,...


claim: A vast number of legal disputes are never filed, with studies suggesting around 120 million legal problems go unresolved in the U.S. each year. He also writes that this access to justice crisis particularly affects low-income Americans, as 92 percent of their significant civil legal issues receive little to no legal aid.

evidence_quote: [p. 3] 2025] JUDICIAL ECONOMY IN THE AGE OF AI 551 justice problems,” many of which affect their “basic human needs.”4 The barriers to justice are legion, but most can be expressed in terms of cost.5 Lawyers charge an average of $292 per hour,6 with common disputes costing between $2,754 and $6,370.7 On the other side of the cost spectrum, commercial actors will spend roughly $2 million in outside legal fees to litigate in full cases.8 Diverse faces and narratives lie behind these numbers, such as Eloisa Veles a Queens resident who recently lost her factory job.9 A local family hired her as a housekeeper, promising $600 per week, only to “stiff” her and pay $300 when the time came. More...


claim: Significant barriers to justice, primarily the high cost of legal services exemplified by average hourly lawyer rates of $292, prevent many individuals from addressing legal problems affecting their basic human needs. He also writes that the sheer investment required means even doubling legal aid budgets has done little to narrow this justice gap, with sociolegal issues like 'legal consciousness' further illustrated by individuals describing being underpaid as being 'stiffed' rather than having their rights violated.

evidence_span: [p. 3] 2025] JUDICIAL ECONOMY IN THE AGE OF AI 551 justice problems,” many of which affect their “basic human needs.”4 The barriers to justice are legion, but most can be expressed in terms of cost.5 Lawyers charge an average of $292 per hour,6 with common disputes costing between $2,754 and $6,370.7 On the other side of the cost spectrum, commercial actors will spend roughly $2 million in outside legal fees to litigate in full cases.8 Diverse faces and narratives lie behind these numbers, such as Eloisa Veles a Queens resident who recently lost her factory job.9 A local family hired her as a housekeeper, promising $600 per week, only to “stiff” her and pay $300 when the time came. More...


claim: Nora and David Freeman Engstrom center the access to justice problem on an asymmetry in legal tech adoption, where firms zealously automate litigation while individuals show "anemic adoption" and rely on "analog tools." He also writes that while this argument about tech asymmetry creating power imbalances, particularly in debt collection litigation, has a kernel of truth, the assertion may be too strong or becoming outdated.

evidence_quote: [p. 4] 552 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 96 annually.12 To put this in perspective, the rate of legal aid lawyers to eligible clients is 1 to 15,625.13 Recently, Nora and David Freeman Engstrom have sought to center the problem of access to justice around legal tech.14 While others have already noted legal tech as a potential barrier,15 they draw on the debt collection litigation literature to fashion a somewhat different argument.16 As this literature demonstrated, this is an area where there is a systemic access issue for low-income defendants, who often cannot afford to mount an effective defense even when one exists, resulting in a default-judgment mill against them.17 The...


claim: Amusing stories of lawyers misusing AI, which support traditional views of the legal profession, distract from the surprising reality that even small firms are adopting these imperfect tools due to their convenience. He also writes that this widespread adoption is anticipated to democratize legal technology, significantly reduce costs, and potentially lead to a litigation boom by expanding access to justice for those currently underserved.

evidence_quote: [p. 5] 2025] JUDICIAL ECONOMY IN THE AGE OF AI 553 We are now witnessing a sea change in the patterns of technological adoption. Most are by now familiar with the occasional news story of a hapless lawyer using AI to comedically bad outcomes.22 The narrative involves a work-shy lawyer submitting an AI-generated and hallucination-riddled brief to an exasperated judge, who then admonishes and sanctions the lawyer. Such widespread stories seem to draw their memetic power from commonplace Shakespearean perceptions of our profession. Incidentally, they also reify an elitist notion that only artisanal lawyering is real lawyering. And perhaps most alluring, they affirm a comforting thought:...